


Exit

by astralpenguin



Series: TMR Discord Anniversary [3]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Faked Suicide, Frypan POV, Gen, Mostly Canon Compliant, Suicide, TMR Discord Anniversary, except for the soup thing, i guess being surrounded by corpses makes humour a little hard to come by, the characters we care about are okay, the suicide is ava's fakeout from the end of the first movie, this ended up a lot more serious than i'd planned on it being tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29198685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralpenguin/pseuds/astralpenguin
Summary: It was, as far as Frypan could tell, an ordinary door. It wasn’t locked, it wasn’t reinforced, there wasn’t a code or anything. It was just a door.And above it was a glowing, green, and entirely standard exit sign.
Series: TMR Discord Anniversary [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1624138
Comments: 15
Kudos: 4





	Exit

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably the bronze medal in my glade anniversary crack collection lmao, most of this ended up heavy on the 'treated seriously' part of that tag, which wasn't expected but i'm not mad about it either. i _can_ promise that no ducklings were harmed this time around

The walls slammed down onto the Grievers and the Gladers were plunged into silence and darkness.

There was no light, no sound, nothing at all.

Frypan quieted his breathing and stayed as still as possible, not wanting to be the one to break the sudden almost-calm that had settled over the group. As far as he could tell, everybody else was doing it too.

Then a clanging noise came from behind them.

The momentary calm was gone, replaced by trepidation. Frypan turned around, could hear the others doing the same, and saw that the screen where Teresa and Chuck had been entering the code moments before, while the rest of them fought off the Grievers, had transformed into a door.

And the door was ajar.

Teresa stepped forwards and pushed the door further open. What lay beyond it wasn’t overly bright, but it was still brighter than the darkness they’d just been surrounded by, and Frypan had to shield his eyes as his vision adjusted.

He wasn’t the only one. A quick look around told him that most of them were doing the same.

That quick look around also showed him how few of his friends had made it.

Minho was still here. Winston. Jack, Billy, and Tim. Thomas. Teresa and Chuck, of course. They’d been the closest to the door, and the furthest from the Grievers.

They’d had more than double this number when they entered the Maze.

The corridor beyond the door stretched on further than Frypan could see in both directions. The far wall was lined with piping, way more piping than there’d been in the shower block in the Glade. As the last person - Minho - stepped through the door and out of the Maze, lights started to turn on overhead, each one making a loud THUNK as it did so.

“What now?” asked someone. Tim, probably, but it might have been Billy, and Frypan didn’t turn around to check.

Nobody responded verbally.

Thomas turned right and started walking. The rest of the group followed.

At a guess, this corridor circled the entire maze. Even if they ended up having to walk the whole way around it, surely they’d find a way out eventually.

Frypan hoped there weren’t going to be any more monsters. Their small group had barely survived as it was, and Frypan was sure that he wasn’t alone in his exhaustion. If a Griever jumped out at them now, that would be it.

He could hear a trickle of water. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

It was probably just the pipes.

Eventually Thomas slowed his pace down, bringing the group to a stop.

It didn’t take long for Frypan, and everyone else, to spot what had caused Thomas to stop walking.

There was a door on the wall opposite to the one backing onto the Maze.

It was, as far as Frypan could tell, an ordinary door. It wasn’t locked, it wasn’t reinforced, there wasn’t a code or anything. It was just a door.

And above it was a glowing, green, and entirely standard exit sign.

Frypan couldn’t let that slide without comment. “Seriously?”

Winston caught his eye and grimaced along with him.

For the final exit to the Maze to be marked by something so mundane _,_ it seemed like a cruel joke.

Then again, it could be argued that their entire lives up to this point had been a cruel joke. At least, what they could remember of their lives certainly was.

What purpose could trapping them all in the Glade with their memories wiped possibly have served?

Thomas stepped forwards and pushed the door open.

The sound of an alarm washed over the group.

Frypan peered over Thomas’ shoulder to see broken glass all over the floor, sparks shooting off of _something,_ and the alarm lights flashing in time with the sound.

There was nowhere to go but forwards.

As before, Thomas led the way.

A few steps in from the door, on the group’s right, was a window. Through the window were two gurneys. Each gurney had a body laid out on it, with sheets covering everything but their feet. The bodies weren’t hooked up to anything, and there was nothing that indicated any possibility that they were still alive.

Frypan gulped. Those bodies being there added a pile of questions to the already existing mountain of them. Somehow, he didn’t think that the answers to them would be pleasant. He didn’t think the answers to _any_ of his questions would be pleasant.

He dragged his gaze away from the window and moved on. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Newt pushing Minho away from it, making him do the same.

There was another body on the floor a few paces ahead of them.

This one didn’t have any blankets covering it.

“What happened here?” asked Chuck.

Nobody knew what to say.

The group kept walking, and soon found themselves in what had once been a high-tech computer lab. Some of the computers were still on, their screens glowing blue and silver and showing graphics and graphs that Frypan’s brain couldn’t decipher at the single glance he gave them. Some of the computers were broken, shattered. More sparks spurted, and this time Frypan could see the source, some damaged wires near the ceiling.

And there were bodies everywhere.

Frypan didn’t look at any of them for longer than he had to. He’d seen enough death today, his _friends’_ deaths, and while he didn’t know any of these people, the last thing he needed was to have yet more death burned into his brain.

These dead people were probably the ones who’d put them in the Maze.

That thought didn’t bring him any comfort.

The group spread out, all walking to different parts of the broken room. Frypan went in the same direction as Newt, and they both drifted over to a bank of computer screens that were relatively undamaged. One screen showed scans of someone’s brain. Another showed a video feed of Frypan’s kitchen in the Glade. Another showed a video feed of one of the Doors marking the boundary between the Maze and the Glade.

If the feed was current, then the Doors were still open.

If any of the Grievers were still functional, then everybody they’d left behind would die.

“So they _were_ watching us,” said Newt. “This whole time.”

He didn’t sound shocked by this revelation. Frypan wasn’t shocked either, it was just confirmation of what they already suspected. If anything, Newt sounded resigned. Disappointed but not surprised.

“Hello.”

Frypan turned towards the unfamiliar voice.

A large screen on the other side of the room had turned itself on.

On the screen was a woman. She had blonde hair, lighter than anyone’s hair in the Glade had been, and wore clothes coloured the cleanest white Frypan had ever seen. She spoke clearly and confidently into the camera, as if she’d done this a thousand times before.

It occurred to Frypan that she most likely had.

“My name is Dr Ava Paige,” she said. “I’m Director of Operations of the World Catastrophe Killzone Department.”

Slowly, Frypan made his way closer to the screen. Everybody else did the same, and soon they were all standing in a small group again, watching the woman.

“If you’re watching this, that means you’ve successfully completed the Maze Trials. I wish I could be there in person to congratulate you, but circumstances seem to have prevented it.”

There were people in the video behind her. Lots of people, all wearing gleaming white lab coats. And they were all getting up from their seats, looking in the same direction, concerned about _something._

Ava paid whatever it was no mind.

Frypan glanced around at the carnage surrounding them.

“I’m sure by now you must all be very confused. Angry. Frightened. I can only assure you that everything that’s happened to you, everything we’ve done to you, it was all done for a reason.”

The image on the screen changed to the sun.

“You won’t remember,” Ava continued to speak despite not being shown on-screen anymore, “but the sun has scorched our world.”

The image changed again, this time to a burning street.

“Billions of lives lost to fire, famine. Suffering on a global scale.”

A leveled city, showing a landscape of rubble covering where Frypan instinctively knew people’s homes had been before.

“The fallout was unimaginable,” said Ava. “What came after was worse.”

She was back on screen now, those other images gone.

“We called it the Flare. A deadly virus that attacks the brain. Violent, unpredictable, incurable. Or so we thought. In time we discovered a substance that, when consumed, helped counteract the effects of the Flare. In some people, mostly young people, consumption of this substance could even eradicate the virus entirely. This substance was soup. Suddenly, there was reason to hope for a cure. But as more time has passed, the virus has mutated, and more sophisticated soups have been needed to fight the virus. It started to overwhelm us. And we were no closer to finding a cure that was guaranteed to work for everyone.”

Frypan could feel the others staring at him.

“The most effective soups were those created by the young, and those created by people in harsh and stressful environments. By putting young people in such environments and monitoring them closely, we would be able to identify what culinary creations they came up with, and attempt to replicate any that appeared to be promising. We were able to run some other experiments concurrently to this, but the invention of new soups was the most pressing one, and the reason why you were all placed inside the Maze in the first place.

“You may not realise it, but you’re very important. Unfortunately, your trials have only just begun.”

Something in the background of the video spewed sparks, and the people behind Ava started running. People dressed all in black entered the frame, gunning people down.

“As you’ll no doubt soon discover,” Ava continued, seemingly unphased by the attack happening mere feet away from her, “not everyone agrees with our methods. Progress is slow. People are scared.”

The sound of gunfire was muffled through the recording, but Frypan felt every shot like a punch to the gut.

“It may be too late for us. For me. But not for you. The outside world awaits. You can take your soups with you and save everyone.” For the first time, Ava shifted her position, leaning forwards in her chair. “Remember.”

She raised a pistol to her temple.

“WCKD is good.”

_Bang_

Thomas, Chuck, and Jack flinched and turned away from the screen.

Frypan didn’t react fast enough. By the time his brain caught up with what he was seeing, he’d already seen all of it, and there wasn’t much point in turning away from it anymore.

In all honesty, it wasn’t the most gruesome thing he’d seen that day.

Thomas walked a few steps in the direction he’d ended up facing. Frypan followed his gaze, and saw the body of a woman dressed in white lying on the ground.

That was probably Ava, then.

The whole group stepped closer.

As they came level with a set of doors, the mechanism behind them turned itself on, and the doors slid open. Beyond them was yet another dark hallway, but at its end Frypan could see a sliver of daylight.

_Daylight._

“Is it over?” asked Chuck.

“She said we were important,” said Newt. “What are we supposed to do now.”

“I don’t know,” said Thomas.

“It’s probably just Frypan who’s important,” said Winston. “She kept going on about soup, and he’s the one who actually makes it.”

“It’s more of a stew, really,” said Frypan, because it _was._

“It must be soup enough to cure people from the virus,” said Teresa. “Otherwise what was the point of it all?”

“I think that question needs asking anyway,” said Minho, his voice harsh. “All of this for _soup?”_

Jack whimpered.

Frypan didn’t know what to think about the whole soup-curing-a-mystery-virus thing. He’d been happy with his role of the Glade’s cook, and he hadn’t minded Thomas and Teresa taking all of the attention during the week’s chaos. Let them be the Creators’ focus. He was fine with being a background character to this story, thank you very much. But the revelation that the reason why they’d been trapped in the Maze was to examine the development of soup, of _his_ soup, meant that suddenly _he_ was the one under the group’s scrutiny.

He didn’t want to be the centre of attention.

But if his cooking meant that his friends would be safe from an awful virus, then good.

If his cooking could help other people too, then even better.

Decision made, he caught Thomas’ eye, and nodded.

Thomas could continue leading the group for now. Whenever Frypan needed to step up, he’d do so without complaint.

Understanding him perfectly, Thomas nodded back at him before turning to face the open doors.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Frypan couldn’t agree more.

**Author's Note:**

> and then gally appears and shoots chuck lmao
> 
> you can find me on [tumblr!](https://astralpenguin.tumblr.com/)


End file.
